


Sillage

by vitreousmonotreme



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Character Study, M/M, or at least musings on the nature of change of identity as a form of death, possible very brief mention of suicide, who IS peter nureyev? we just don't know
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-09
Updated: 2017-01-09
Packaged: 2018-09-16 12:18:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9270944
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vitreousmonotreme/pseuds/vitreousmonotreme
Summary: /sēˈäZH/ noun.  the subtle trail left behind by the cologne or scent worn by a person who has already gone.Who is Peter Nureyev? A man skilled at disappearing, but never quite completely.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Transplanted over from an old tumblr post, with minor edits. I was finagling around trying to find Peter's voice for my last fic and this came out.

Peter Nureyev is, within hours, nothing but the lingering note of a cologne that Juno Steel cannot identify. It is the scent of an outside, an elsewhere, of a thing that Juno cannot have and should not want so damn _badly_. It hangs in his office, in his home, in his car, in his clothes; he hates it, but he hates the absence when it finally dissipates even more. He sleeps more than usual, and dreams about it, and wakes up sweating.

Peter Nureyev is gone, except for how he isn’t. The kiss burns on Juno’s lips for week after week. It never really fades; he just stops noticing it after a while, stops being able to tell Peter Nureyev apart from Juno Steel. It sinks into his skin, as the fading smell sinks into his walls and into his memory.

 

Peter Nureyev was supposed to be gone.

 

Peter Nureyev is a name last spoken by a dying man with wide owl eyes, by an officer with shaking hands and a terrified look he was trying too hard to conceal. Mag was the last person to really _call_ him that; the guard didn’t count. In a lot of ways, Peter died the moment Mag did: afraid, covered in blood, only eighteen, _probably_ eighteen. Peter turned the knife on himself, Peter was shot by the guards, Peter died instantly when a smoke grenade went wrong, Peter plummeted to the ground along with the city. Peter stayed with Mag, as he should have.

But Peter Nureyev is a whisper. Peter Nureyev is a gift, left to the people of Brahma by the nameless thief who killed him. The patricians of New Kinshasa, of half a dozen floating cities, confer about that name in raised voices, in numb near-silence. On the ground, the whispers are of an entirely different kind; and when the lasers stop, a brave few begin to speak the name out loud instead. Peter Nureyev is a legend, then, a myth. Peter Nureyev is a man who can pluck a city out of the sky and put it back as it pleases him. Peter Nureyev is a name which puts a planet at attention. Peter Nureyev is a name shrieked by children as they fight in the street, arguing which role each will play; a name invoked by mothers to ensure good behavior; a name which serious, hard-eyed men with nothing of the idealistic and everything of dogged intent about them discuss quietly in the back rooms of certain houses and drinking establishments on certain, alternating days of the month.

 

Peter Nureyev lives on, and Peter Nureyev is dead.

 

Peter dies, and nothing replaces him. Oh, names, personalities, they come and go –- many of them, on whims, more and more boldly and easily as the years go by. But the thief cradles the cavity once occupied by the idea that called itself Peter Nureyev, and walls it up, and leaves it empty. No ‘real’ names, no secret selves. He decides that: too much risk, too much pain, too much temptation, too much of a giveaway when you had to build your facade on top of something that couldn’t be hidden.

(It is easier to pretend with the entirety of yourself; it is easier to wear a mask with nothing behind it.)

 

Peter Nureyev has long ago left the building.

 

Eighteen years later –- a lifetime later –- Peter Nureyev waltzes right back in uninvited.

 

That’s not quite true, of course. Wise or not, especially before Mag was around to curb the impulse, little Peter always had a tendency to pick the pockets of the ones who looked at him with the greatest disgust, to slip in through the open windows of those who chased young boys away from their shopfronts with knives instead of brooms. He liked a challenge (and the thief still does, oh yes); he’s always considered them an invitation, and the standoffish glare, the irascible tones of Juno Steel are the very _best_ kind of invitation there is. Peter Nureyev slips out from underneath Rex Glass and offers Juno Steel a wink, a crown, a kiss; and Rex Glass is a good enough actor that, at the time, he fools not only Juno but himself into thinking that these are Rex’s actions, and not those of Peter Nureyev.

Juno sees through it before the thief does. Maybe that’s what really clinches it, what makes him write the note. It’s been a long time since anyone saw Nureyev.

Peter Nureyev, after all, is dead and gone. But as Juno Steel could have told the thief –- as the thief could have told the young Peter who drew the knife –- the dead and the vanished leave traces behind that, when you think they have faded, reveal themselves to have simply sunk in so deep that you no longer notice their presence.

And then Peter Nureyev is a sudden, inexplicable whim, a last-second decision made to trust the detective who has already decided against the thief. He scribbles the name of a dead man on a scrap of paper, hardly even noticing he’s doing it, occupied simultaneously with flirting with Juno and with finessing the last details of his escape. It’s been a long time since someone got the drop on him, he thinks, leaving the paper behind on the chair as he’s pulled away; only fair to pay back a surprise, only sporting to leave such a clever –- and handsome –- opponent with a token that might, if he were lucky, even lead to a second game.

Not a rematch, the thief hopes; Juno would be itching for one, no doubt, but he rather likes the thought of the detective on his own team. He’d make a fabulous good luck charm.

 

Peter Nureyev is the last, faint mark of a boy who no longer exists, deep inside of a man who is no one and anyone, until one day, that man suddenly wonders when his names had become masks, when a _self_ had swum up underneath them, why that self should be the same one he had left behind a very long time ago.

Then he thinks back to the name and the note. And –- another surprise, courtesy of Juno Steel –- he smiles.

And he doesn’t know why this sudden development, the undoing of eighteen years’ comfortable distance, should bring him any pleasure –- but he’s always felt that the most exciting part of not knowing something is finding it out. Something about this one tells him he’ll enjoy it. If nothing else, it will be quite the story.

 

Peter Nureyev idly wonders whether the detective has picked up his clues yet.

 

In Hyperion City, alone in his apartment, Juno Steel pauses, and breathes in deep.


End file.
